Georgist Values, Christian Economics
Three panelists spoke on the subject of Georgist
Values, Christian Economics at the Council of Georgist
Organizations conference July 23, 2004 in Albuquerque.
Ethical Land Tenure
by Alanna Hartzok
Scotland, PA
About 20 years ago I put together a paper called
"Ethical Land Tenure" distributed as a resource directory.
I want to tell you the story of Charles Avilla. A
while back I came across a book called Ownership, Early
Christian Teachings. Avilla was a divinity student in the
Phillipines. One of his professors had a great concern
about poverty conditions in the Phillipines, and was taking
students out to prisons where the cooks were the land
rights revolutionaries in the Phillipines. Because they
kept pushing for land reform for the people, they had ended
up in jail. So they were political prisoners who were
reading the Bible and were asking the question, who did God
give this earth to? Who does it belong to? It isn't in
the Bible that so few should have so much and so many have
so little. In the theological world in this upscale
seminary he was trying to put this together about poverty
and what the biblical teachings were. He had a thesis to
write and he was thinking he would do something about
economic justice. One of his professors thought there
would be a wealth of information from the church's early
history, the first 300 years after Jesus. So he actually
went back to read the Latin and Greek about land ownership
and found a wealth of information about the prophetic
railings of the people in that early time on the rights of
the land.
Let me give you a few quotes from that early period.
Nehemiah 5:11, "Restore, I pray you, to them this
day their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and
their houses."
Ezekiel 33:24, "The land is given us as an
inheritance."
Ecclesiastes 5:9, "The profit of the earth is for
all."
And Isaiah 5:8, "Woe unto them that join house to
house, that lay field to field til there be no place ..."
Leviticus 25:23, "The land is mine, for you are
strangers and sojourners with me."
In the Judaic tradition, and the Talmudic tradition,
how much of the Jubilee justice was actually implemented is
a subject of discussion. Some say it was a good idea but
not put in place. Others say it was substantially put into
place.
The Talmudic rabinical discussion is of interest to
Georgists because they tried to allocate the land according
to the richness of the soil for agriculture. For better
soil, richer for agriculture, maybe an acre of that would
be allocated. On the poorer soil, these tribes could get
five acres.
The other thing was some lands were closer to the
market. Some land was closer to Jerusalem. That is an
advantage over those who would have to travel a longer
distance to get to the market. How do you have an equal
rights distribution of land allocation with reference to
the market problem? For those more advantageously
situated, the adjustment was to be made by money. Those
holding land nearer the city should pay in to the common
treasury the estimated excess of value attaining to it by
reason of superior situation. While those holding land of
less value by reason of distance from the city would
receive from the treasury a money compensation. On the
more valuable holdings would be imposed a tax or a lease
fee, the measure of which was the excess of their
respective values over a given standard, and the fund thus
created was to be paid out in due proportion to those whose
holdings were in less favorable locations.
In this, then, we see affirmed the doctrine that
natural advantages are common property and may not be
diverted to private gain. Throughout the ages when wisdom
is applied to land problems, we see this emerge.
Charles Avilla in his book Ownership, Early
Christian Teachings mentioned Henry George twice as being
the prophetic voice of recent times that is most closely
attuned to these ancient truths.
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Alanna Hartzok is Co-Director of the Earth Rights
Institute (http://www.earthrights.net). She may be
emailed at earthrts@pa.net